World's Largest Ball of Twine

We have arrived at our final destination (other than home) in Cawker City Kansas. What could possibly be there, you might ask? And for good reason too, because truly, there is nothing else in Kansas except for....THE WORLD'S BIGGEST BALL OF TWINE!!!!! How excited was I to finally get here? This was super exciting and I'm going to tell you right now that I'm following this post with a lot of pictures of the same thing so be prepared to be regaled by an array of twine pictures.

Cawker City: Home of the World's Largest Ball of Twine

Kinda looks like time has stood still here, doesn't it?

In 1988 it was pretty big.

In 2006, it was bigger!

And now....It's HUGE! The yellow squiggle line runs down the steps and up and down the sidewalks on both sides of the street. The words lining the yellow squiggle urge you to follow the lines to look at a series of paintings in the windows of the buildings along the main street and look for the ball of twine incorporated into each one.

It's SO BIG!!!

I'm so excited to be here!

One last stop and pose for the Wedding Glasses

The guest book. There were people there to visit only two days before us. People have come from Texas, California, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and now Pennsylvania! 

This is the souvenir shop that is open sometimes. The sign in front of it says 'Souvenirs from 50 cents to $25'. Gotta love the price range; then you know what you're getting yourself into.

The shop wasn't open, but luckily the owner posts her phone number and I called it and she sent me down the street a couple of blocks to her house where she keeps souvenirs also! She was pretty funny. 

The owner of the souvenir shop was a funny little old lady. She was the tiniest, most petite lady with dark gray hair piled atop her head and falling in messy ringlets around her face. She had huge bug-eye glasses and a flower patterned robe on when I arrived. She showed me the corner of goodies and I rifled through a bit and I asked her about adding twine to the ball. Excitement of all excitements, we were allowed to add twine! She walked out to the foyer and hauled out a huge spool of sisal twine, handed me one end and instructed me to walk outside to the mailbox then turn around and come back to her. Twice. She cut me two pieces, one for each of us and verbalized very precise instructions. "You make sure to go on back and tie that in because it's goin' in the book, now. You go on back now" she says. We did indeed "go on back" and had a grand old time tying our very own pieces of twine into the ball, which we have a video of but I can't figure out how to upload it so that's a bummer, but I guess there are a lot pictures.
 

And now, we're headed home. It's been quite a trip. There have certainly been some highs and lows but as we reflect on how lucky we are to have had the opportunity to do this trip, we are so thankful. What a wonderful blessing it has been to be able to spend this amount of time together, continuing to learn about one another and learning the art of communication and compromise (which I'm sure we will be learning about our entire lives). It has truly been a journey and it's been fun to have you all travel with us. Thanks for reading the blog--it really has been a blast to be able to share the highlights with you. Don't stop reading though; I know Josh has one more post he'd like to share with you all.

...til the next time!